Ben Marsh

Pleistocene pingo scars in Pennsylvania

Pleistocene open-system pingo scars have been identified within the Ridge and Valley province in central Pennsylvania. The features are elliptical basins, averaging 20 by 50 m in plan and 4 m in depth, bounded by low ramparts. Located beyond the limit of Pleistocene glaciation, they closely resemble features reported as pingo scars in England, and they are dated at 12.8 ka by radiocarbon analysis of their basal fill. These scars are clear evidence of the existence, depth, and continuity of permafrost in the eastern United States at the end of the Pleistocene. They show that perennially frozen ground extended to at least 5 m in some places, at the same time that the ground nearby was unfrozen.

Ceramics, trade, provenience and geology: Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age

The island of Cyprus was a major producer of copper and stood at the heart of east Mediterranean trade networks during the Late Bronze Age. It may also have been the source of the Red Lustrous Wheelmade Ware that has been found in mortuary contexts in Egypt and the Levant, and in Hittite temple assemblages in Anatolia. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has enabled the source area of this special ceramic to be located in a geologically highly localised and geochemically distinctive area of western Cyprus. This discovery offers a new perspective on the spatial organisation of Cypriot economies in the production and exchange of elite goods around the eastern Mediterranean at this time.

Scales of impact: Settlement history and landscape change in the Gordion Region, central Anatolia

The expansion of agriculture in the Near East during the middle Holocene significantly altered the physical landscape. However, the relationship between the scale of agriculture and the magnitude and timing of the environmental impacts is not well known. The Gordion Regional Survey provides a novel dataset to compare settlement density during archaeological periods to rates of environmental disruption. Sediment samples from alluvial cores directly date the environmental disruption, which can be matched to period-specific settlement intensities in the watershed as constructed from archaeological survey ceramics. Degradation rates rose sharply within a millennium of the earliest Chalcolithic occupation. Early Bronze Age (EBA) land use induced the greatest rates of environmental degradation, although settlement density was relatively low on the landscape. The degradation rate subsequently decreased to one-third its early peak by the Iron Age, even as settlement intensity climbed. This trajectory reveals how complex interaction effects can amplify or subdue the responses of the landscape–land use system. Prior to settlement, landscape soil reservoirs were highly vulnerable, easily tipped by early agricultural expansion. Subsequent reduced rates of erosion are tied both to changes in sociopolitical organization and to depletion of the vulnerable soil supply.

Understanding the Role of Social Factors in Farmworker Housing and Health.

Differences in social advantage significantly influence health conditions and life expectancy within any population. Such factors reproduce historic class, race, and ethnic disparities in community success. Few populations in the United States face more social and economic disadvantage than farmworkers, and farmworker housing has significant potential to ameliorate or amplify the health impact of those disadvantages. Drawing on the limited direct research on farmworkers, and on additional research about poor, isolated, and immigrant societies, we propose four mechanisms through which housing can be expected to affect farmworker health: quality of social capital within farmworker communities, stress effects of poor housing situations, effects of housing on social support for healthy behaviors, and interactions among these factors, especially effects on children that can last for generations. Policy and planning definitions of “adequate” farmworker housing should take a more holistic view of housing needs to support specific social and community benefits in design decisions.

Reading Social Symbol Systems

Social organizations are symbolic constructions, deriving effectiveness through the creation and expression of shared meaning. Symbol systems contain coherent grammars of meaning that can be read by participants and observers. The construction and alteration of symbol systems is a powerful way in which social units define reality for themselves and others. Contemporary analysis of social symbol systems focuses on the structure of the symbol systems but also on the power relations inherent in the production and consumption of meaning. This chapter explores how socially relevant symbol systems are created and used by group members, and how they may be interpreted by students and researchers. Standard methodologies for reading visual symbols are much less well developed than those for verbal symbols. Case studies highlight the modalities of symbolic presentation (music, cultural performance, language), contested symbols (e.g., the Confederate flag), the cultural landscape (e.g., architecture and identity), neoliberalism and public symbol systems (e.g., sports stadium naming rights), and the use of symbols to define the boundaries of identity (e.g., Amish separateness).

Building the Next Seven Wonders: The Landscape Rhetoric of Large Engineering Projects

No aspect of macroengineering makes sense unless it is understood as part of a cultural landscape symbol system, as an element of the cultural messages seen throughout the human landscape. Investment in large projects is based not only on economic calculations, it is also investment in a message. As high cost productions of large corporate or state entities, megaengineering projects carry rhetorical content that is almost always about elaborating and sustaining the authority and power of those actors. The archetypal suite of historic landscape symbols of power and authority is the 2200 year old Hellenistic “Seven Wonders of the World” list. The Wonders are manifestations of a set of cultural landscape tropes still recognizable today in the political messages contained within large scale engineering projects. The Seven Wonders are landscapes of authority, demonstrating elements recognized by Hellenistic society as projecting and reinforcing political power. Engineering landscape symbol systems continue to evolve as the modern world is changed by globalization, geopolitical conflict, economic disruption, and environmental degradation, but the root meanings of large scale alterations of the landscape are still to be found on this short list of landscapes chosen as an allegory for the conquests of Alexander.